Psalm 27:14

Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD!

1 John 4:16

God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.

We are far too easily pleased.

It would seem our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine  what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea. We are far too easily pleased. – C. S. Lewis

Risk living by values that the world rejects.

How can we serve a Lord, the symbol of whose failure is above our altars, in top of our churches, on our stationary, and around our necks, and claim to be a stranger to failure? The power of Christ’s Passion is that every human being can identify with it, if he or she just gives it some thought. Despite our best intentions and our fervent hopes, each of us is nailed to his or her cross daily. Certainly this is true of the ordained person, who is called to be “another Christ” and to risk living by values that the world not only rejects but perceives as subversive of its goals and objectives. – Urban T. Holmes III

Note: If we are followers of Jesus, we are all called to live like Jesus, and so we are al called to “risk living by values that the world not only rejects but perceives as subversive of its goals and objectives.”

Real training for service…

…asks for a hard and often painful process of self-emptying. The main problem of service is to be the way without being ‘in the way.’ And if there are any tools, techniques and skills to be learned they are primarily to plow the field, to cut the weeds, and to clip the branches, that is, to take away the obstacles for real growth and development. Training for service is not a training to become rich but to become voluntarily poor; not to fulfill ourselves but to empty ourselves; not to conquer God, but to surrender to his saving power. All this is very hard to accept in our contemporary world, which tells us about the importance of power and influence. But it is important that in this world there remain a few voices crying out that if there is anything to boast of, we should boast of our weakness. Our fulfillment is in offering emptiness, our usefulness in becoming useless, our power in becoming powerless. – Henri Nouwen

Love Your Enemies

Do not say that the  teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ cannot be followed – if you are a Christian. They can be, if Christ lives in you. What is more, they must be followed. – J. M. Boice

Tim Keller on the Charge of Christian Inconsistency about the Law

Christians and the Old Testament Law